The present invention pertains to the placing or positioning of containers upon a conveyor.
In the art of filling and closing containers, such as plastic bottles, the containers are very often placed on a conveyor by a manual operation after which they are directed through a filling operation and then a capping or closure operation. Such an operation can become a slow and laborious task, while at the same time increasing operating costs.
In the present-day operation of a plant engaged in the filling of containers with milk, it is becoming standard procedure to utilize plastic containers of a half a gallon or gallon size. In many instances, the plastic bottles are received from a bottle manufacturer in package form and same are manually opened and the bottles placed by hand upon a conveyor, where they move through a filling machine and are subsequently capped or have a closure applied thereto. This type of operation requires a number of operators to effectively handle the bottles during the course of filling same.
Another type of operation is one wherein a bottle-making machine is associated with a bottle-filling machine. In an installation of this type, the bottle-making machine delivers the plastic bottles to a conveyor which moves said bottles through the filling machine, after which they are capped or closed. In situations where the filling machine becomes inoperative the conveyor line is soon filled with plastic bottles, and it then becomes necessary to effectively remove said plastic bottles from the conveyor and store same or to close down the bottle-making machine. The latter situation can pose numerous problems as can the necessity of removing and storing a large number of plastic bottles, which in itself would require a number of people, thereby raising the cost of the bottle-making operation.